A Shabbos goy, Shabbat goy or Shabbes goy (Yiddish: ??? ???, shabbos goy Modern Hebrew: ??? ?? ??? goy shel shabat) is a non-Jew who performs certain types of work (melakha) for a Jew on the Biblical Sabbath, work which Jewish Law (Halachah) enjoins the Jew from doing on the Sabbath. The phrase is a combination of the word "Shabbos" (???) meaning the Sabbath, and "Goy", which literally means "a nation" but colloquially and practically means a "non-Jew" (in Biblical Hebrew "goy" means simply "a nation", but in Mishnaic Hebrew it is used in the sense of "a non-national", i.